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Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros. is a Nintendo Entertainment System video game released in 1985 by Nintendo. The game, designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka, has become one of the most important and successful video games of all time. The second best selling video game (preceded solely by Wii Sports), Super Mario Bros. has found its way in the homes of over 40 million consumers. It was introduced to many Americans as an arcade title, though the home console version generated more sales. A successor to the arcade video game Mario Bros., the game was perhaps as popular as it was due to the increasing fanbase of gamers who immensely enjoyed titles like Donkey Kong and, naturally, Mario Bros. The Nintendo Entertainment System's success in America can arguably be attributed to the video game, and certainly it helped increase the sales of the Famicom in Japan. In Super Mario Bros., the character Mario sets off on an adventure to save Princess Toadstool from King Koopa (both later renamed to Princess Peach and Bowser, respectively). Princess Toadstool is capable of reversing the black magic of King Koopa, which explains his motives for kidnapping her. King Koopa uses his magic on the Mushroom Kingdom and transforms the denizens of the land into mushrooms and stones. In the multiplayer mode, the second player will take control of Mario's brother Luigi when the first player loses a life. The game is recognized worldwide for its significant contributions to the gaming industry, particularly in America where it brought the country out of the video game decline of the eighties. Journalists' acknowledgment of its importance is evident today with the game appearing on a myriad of "best games of all time lists", gracing the top spot of Electronic Gaming Monthly and IGN's lists on numerous occasions. Its success led to the creation of several sequels, two of which are known as Super Mario Bros. 2. In Japan, the game Super Mario Bros. 2 is known as Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels in America and Europe due to its nonappearance on the NES in those territories. Westerners, on the other hand, received their own version of Super Mario Bros. 2, which was a remake of a game titled Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic in Japan but with Mario characters. Plot One day, the Mushroom Kingdom was unexpectedly invaded by Bowser, the Koopa King and his minions. They used their black magic to transform the denizens of the kingdom into blocks, which were scattered throughout the land. Bowser kidnaps Princess Toadstool, the only person capable of reversing the effects of the Koopa's black magic, and traps her in his most guarded castle. Far far away, Mario, a plumber, hears about what has happened and immediately sets off to save the Mushroom Kingdom. Interestingly, the manual states that Mario is "maybe" the hero of the game, indicating that the conclusion of the game is up to the player. If the player manages to travel through each world, thus saving the Mushroom Retainers that were captured in each of the world's castles, then he'll ultimately face Bowser at the end of world eight. Bowser proves to be the most challenging of all the bosses in the game (the rest of them, while similar in appearance, were actually standard enemies dressed up as the Bowser), and if Mario manages to bypass him then he'll save the Princess Toadstool, thus ending the game. After completing the game, a second quest becomes available. Characters Many of the characters from the Mario series were introduced in this game, though the two of the characters went under different names then what they are known as today. Princess Toadstool, now known as Princess Peach, Bowser, and the Mushroom People/Retainers, now known as Toad, were all introduced in Super Mario Bros. Various famous enemies were also first found in this game, such as the Goombas, Koopa Troopas, Piranha Plants, Bullet Bills, Cheep-Cheep, and others. Mario and Luigi, who were introduced in Donkey Kong and Mario Bros., respectively, were both introduced in this game. *'Mario': Mario is the hero of the game. He's a plumber who was initially introduced in Donkey Kong for the arcades. In this game, his appearance has been slightly changed and he has gained various new powers. He is the playable character. **'Luigi': Luigi is player 2 in Super Mario Bros. He only becomes available in the multiplayer portion of the game, which has players alternating between Mario and Luigi, trying to finish the game that way. The only difference between Mario and Luigi are a change in clothes. There are no gameplay differences between the two. *'Princess Toadstool': Now known as Princess Peach (she was named Toadstool up until Yoshi's Safari on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System). She is the daughter of the Mushroom King (never seen in the game) and is the only one capable of turning the Mushroom People back into their normal selves. Bowser has kidnapped her in hopes that she is unable to do this. *'Bowser': Bowser is the villain of the game who invades the Mushroom Kingdom and kidnaps Princess Toadstool. He is often referred to as the Koopa King in the game, him being the lord of the Koopa Troopas. He acts as the final boss in Super Mario Bros. Various enemies dress up as a Fake Bowser in worlds 1-7, though the one and true Bowser appears at the end of the game. *'Mushroom People': Now known as Toads, the Mushroom People/Retainers appear at the end of world 1-7, telling Mario or Luigi that the "Princess is in another castle". When Bowser invaded the Mushroom Kingdom, he turned all of the Mushroom People into blocks that are scattered throughout the stages. Enemies *Koopa Troopa - A turtle-like enemy that can be a projectile if jumped on first. There are two types of them, a green one and a red one. The green ones will run off the edge while the red will stay put on the platform he is on. If you jump on them and then leave them like that, they will come back out of there shell. *Koopa Paratroopa - A flying Koopa Troopa that will jump up and down. Like the regular Koopas, these are either red or green. The green ones will jump off the edge while the red ones will jump back and forth on the platform he's on. *Goomba - The most common enemy that will only try to run into you. They are beaten by jumping on them and squishing them. They will sometimes attack in groups, where you will be able to kill them all while jumping once. *Lakitu - Lakitu's are Koopas that sit atop clouds throwing Spinies at you. If you manage to kill one, you can ride the cloud. *Spiny - Spinies are the enemy that Lakitus throw at you. They are red Koopas that have spines on their back, meaning that you can't kill them by jumping on them. In fact, they'll harm you if you jump on them! They can be defeated by a Koopa or Buzzy Beetle shell, fireball, or running into them while invincible. *Buzzy Beetle - A beetle that is like a Koopa Troopa, except the only way to kill it is to knock it off an edge, hit it with a shell, or to ram into it while in possession of a Starman. *Piranha Plant - A carnivorous plant that will pop out of pipes trying to bite you. *Bullet Bill - A bullet that will be shot out of a cannon toward you. *Hammer Bros. - A pair of Koopa brothers that will throw hammers. Even though you will usually find them in pairs, they will also sometimes fight solo. *Cheep Cheep - A fish that will try to swim into you, or just swim on a certain path. *Blooper - A squid that will try to swim into you. *Podoboo - A fire ball that will pop out of lava. Gameplay In Super Mario Bros., the player takes control of Mario and is tasked with sending him through various trials that ultimately lead to saving Princess Toadstool. In the two player mode, player one will play for as long as possible until his character dies, after which the second player will take his place and control Luigi (who is only playable in the two player mode). The two characters have negligible differences, with the only noticeable dissimilarities are a change in clothing (Mario has red and brown clothes while Luigi has green and white). The objective of the game is to simply move right and reach the end of each stage. The player is able to move left to an extent, though once they start to move left the camera will stay in place. When moving right, the camera centers on the player. If the player goes as far left as possible and then starts to go to the right once again, then the camera won't remain centered on them until they reach the center. In Super Mario Bros., the player is unable to reach the far right of the stage. There are various obstacles littered throughout each stage, some working against Mario or Luigi and others acting as simple traps set by Bowser. Some obstacles don't immediately seem to pose a threat such as blocks jutting out of the ground or stationed above the player, though they can prevent the progress of them largely depending on where they're placed. When the player first encounters an obstacle such as this, they are required to maneuver around it, usually by jumping. Besides walking and running, jumping is the most frequently performed action in the game. Jumping is used to overcome obstacles, kill enemies and receive power-ups. Jumping is what makes Super Mario Bros. a platforming game. This action was first introduced in Donkey Kong, and due to its success consequently found its way into subsequent entries in the series. In Super Mario Bros., the player can alter their position while airborne so that they will be able to land in the desired location. For example, if there are numerous gaps in the ground and the player wishes to land on a particular platform, then they can jump and quickly alter where they are by pressing the d-pad either left or right. If done properly, they will land on the platform and avoid disaster whereas if they didn't take direct control in the air they would have likely fallen in the gap. The height and the distance the character will go depends mostly on the speed of him. If Mario or Luigi is running, then they'll be able to reach a height of five blocks and length of 8 1/2 blocks. Conversely, if he is walking then he will only get to a height of 4 blocks and a length of 5. There are various ways a character can lose his life. This can happen by taking damage, falling into a gap or getting hit by an element such as fire. Falling into a gap can be done with an uncalculated jump or an unconcentrated player clumsily falling into a gap. Some players tend to try and avoid an enemy by jumping, only to fall into a gap by failing to realize it was there in the first place. Enemies pose the biggest threat since they're mobile and in rare cases unpredictable. Most players can correctly conjecture the pattern in which the most of the enemies will move. The player can also lose a life by not completing the level within 400 seconds. In the game, there are two types of challenges including ones enforced b enemies and ones enforced by the environment. Typically both can be very easy or very hard to overcome. Challenges in the second group can include any obstruction in the game that is non-sentient. As previously mentioned, failing to leap over a gap can lead to Mario's untimely death. A simple block or two on the ground can be considered an obstacle since Mario is required to jump over them, though (if there are no enemies) it poses no actual threat of losing a life. Some stages include platforms that move upwards and downwards, and if the player stays on these platforms for too long it'll send them too far off the screen and will cause them to lose a life. The very fact that the platforms are moving will cause the player to rethink what they have to do in order to reach the other side. The Podoboo, due to their inability to permanently dispatch them, aren't considered enemies. They pop out of the lava and touching them can result in death if the player is not Super Mario or Fire Mario. The long lines of fire that are usually present in the same stages as Podoboo rotate and thus cause a more challenging threat to get past. Enemies are the major threat of the game, though despite this fact the player is always able to kill them, even if doing so requires a certain item. Enemies all have the common goal of taking down Mario, though they're not all the brightest of creatures. For the most part they act differently from one another though they can all be categorized based on their movement and attack pattern, and in what way the player is capable of taking them out. Mario can dispatch enemies in a variety of ways including hitting them from above, below and attacking them with a fireball after coming in possession of a Fire Flower or crashing into them after collecting a Starman. The act of hitting an enemy who is on a set of blocks from below originates from Mario Bros. The Piranha Plant is a type of enemy that is often times considered a trap due to its inability to move, remaining stationary for the most part save for coming out of a pipe when the character comes near it. The Piranha Plant can be killed via a Fire Flower, though one variation of a Piranha Plant will spew fireballs from its mouth, which do just as much damage as an enemy attack. There are some enemies that don't respond directly to the player and just move either to the left or to the right. These enemies pose a threat since touching them will result in a lost life unless the player jumps on them (or if they have a powerup). These enemies include the likes of Goombas and Koopa Troopas. When the player jumps on the shell of a Koopa Troopa, it retracts into its shell and the player can kick it, using it as a weapon that acts as a double edged sword when it launches back at the player after hitting a wall. The Hammer Bros. and Lakitu are among the few enemies that act haphazardly and unpredictably, and require more thinking in how to dispatch if the player doesn't have a Fire Flower or Starman in possession. Mario and Luigi will be able to more easily take out the enemies by finding special items contained within boxes with a question mark on them, indicating that what is found within is random, which in actuality the item will for the most part be the same each time depending on whether the player is little or super Mario or Luigi or Super Mario. The item within can be "opened" by jumping underneath it. After hitting it, one of various different types of items will come out, including a Super Mushroom, Fire Flower, Starman, 1-Up Mushroom, or a simple coin which, after collecting 100 of them, will net the player an extra life. Collecting a single coin will result in points. A Super Mushroom is the most basic power up in the game and the first one they'll encounter if they hit the ? blocks in the order in which they're supposed to be hit. A Super Mushroom will enlarge the player, turning them into Super Mario or Super Luigi. This grants Mario and Luigi an extra bit of health, meaning they won't die automatically after being attacked by an enemy (though will still lose a life when they fall in a gap or into lava). Super Mario can break through blocks though is unable to fit in places that are the size of little Mario unless he gets a running start and ducks, after which he'll slide through the blocks due to the momentum of the run. Fire Mario will allow Mario to shoot fire balls form his hands, easily allowing him to take out various enemies. The Starman in an invincibility item that, for a short time, allows Mario to plow through enemies without worrying about them hurting the player, though like the other items if the player falls in a gap or into fire it'll cause the character to die and lose a life. Stages Types of Levels Note: These are the types of levels that were in the original game, and not the remakes. Some of the remakes include a snow world, and others. *'Overworld/Grassy' - The main types of levels are the grassy ones, or Overworld. The sky is blue, the main platform are brick blocks and grass, and there are trees. The common enemies here are Goombas, Koopa Troopas, Hammer Bros, Lakitus, Spinies, Bullet Bills, Piranha Plants, Buzzy Beetles, and Koopa Paratroopas. *'Underground' - Underground areas are dark, and feature many secrets such as getting above the ceiling, and the warp zones. Every sprite in here has a blue or other darker color, including Mario. There are tons of blocks, which meens its a good idea to be Super Mario in here. Common enemies include Buzzy Beetles, Koopa Troopas, Goombas, Spinies and Piranha Plants. *'Underwater' - Underwater areas are very blue, and have a lot of coral and water plants. This is the only area where the gameplay increasingly changes. Instead of running and jumping, Mario will now swim. Common enemies are Bloopers and Cheep Cheeps. *'Lava/Castle' - Castles, or lava areas, will be the last type of level in each world. In these areas, there will be many lava pits, and castle bricks surrounding you. Common enemies include Podoboos, Bowser, and Fake Bowsers. *'Bridge' - The bridge levels feature a huge outside bridge, with occasional grassy platforms. Common enemies include Cheep Cheeps, Koopas, and Goombas. *'Mushroom Platforms' - These types of levels take place on many different types of huge mushrooms. The common enemies include Goombas, Koopa Troopas, Hammer Bros., Lakitus, Spinys, Bullet Bills and Koopa Paratroopas. *'Dark Overworld' - Sometimes, the grassy/overworld will be nighttime. This does not effect the gameplay in anyway. The common enemies include Goombas, Koopa Troopas, Hammer Bros, Lakitus, Spinies, Bullet Bills, Piranha Plants, Buzzy Beetles, and Koopa Paratroopas. *'Clouds' - Sometimes, you will be able to go to a cloud area, which is on clouds. Here, there are many coins, and absolutely no enemies whatsoever except one last Koopa at the end of the level. Warp Zone One of the popular things you can do in the game is the Warp Zone. If you find a warp zone, it takes Mario to an area with a certain amount of pipes, each pipe is numbered, depending on the number on the pipe, it will take you to the world number when you enter it. To get to the Warp Zone, you usually must find it by jumping above certain blocks, or finding vines to climb up. There are only 3 warp zones, one in world 1, and 2 in world 4. The Warp Zones are all found within underground levels, though the Level 4-2 Warp Zone takes you to an area above ground, and onto mushroom platforms. The Warp Zone is usually located behind the Exit Pipe. Warp Zone locations *Level 1-2 - Found by going above the ceiling. *Level 4-2 - Found by jumping under a block to reveal a vine. *Level 4-2 (number 2) - Found by going above the ceiling. Glitches Very few people worked on Super Mario Bros., and thus it is riddled with glitches. Gamers have spent countless hours traversing the many stages of Super Mario Bros. attempting to find new glitches. Some of them, such as the Minus World and the infinite 1-Up trick are famous among gamers, while others are hardly known. Minus World The Minus World is one of the most famous glitches in any video game. It is actually world 7-2 infinitely looped, but the number is 36-1. Since the number 36-1 in the game is represented as a blank space, it looks like the level is world -1. This is where the level's name (World Minus One, or The Minus World) comes from. To enter the Minus World, one must reach World 1-2 as Super Mario, and continue to the end of the level. The player must not enter the pipe that leads to the flagpole. Instead, the player must jump on top of the pipe and break the second and third blocks from the right on the ceiling. Then, the player must maneuver Super Mario to the edge of the pipe so that one of his feet is hanging off. Then, making sure not to smash the block that is farthest to the right, the player must jump backwards into the left side of the block. This will cause the camera to scroll to the right. Continuing to do this will eventually cause Super Mario to be sucked into the wall. Now, the player must enter the leftmost pipe before the camera finishes scrolling. Entering the middle pipe will warp the player to World 5, while entering the leftmost pipe will allow the player to enter the Minus World. In the NES version, the Minus World is an underwater level that never ends. There are Coins and Bloopers in the level, and so it seems to be perfectly normal. However, entering what would appear to be the exit pipe causes the player to respawn at the beginning of the level. The player will continue to go through this looping level until the time runs out, at which point, if he or she has any lives left, the level will start again. The player will not be able to exit the Minus World until he or she either gets a Game Over or turns the console off. When the Minus World is played on the Famicom Disk System, it instead consist of three levels, levels that actual end. Completing these returns the player to the title screen, as if the game had been beaten. Goombas are subsequently replaced with Buzzy Beetles in the following game. The three levels are more or less identical versions of other levels in the game, though world -1 functions as if it was an underwater level and includes weird elements such as floating Princess Peaches. The Minus World was removed in the many remakes of Super Mario Bros, though in recent emulations for the Game Boy Advance and Virtual Console the developers kept it, and various other glitches from the game, in. Other glitches *'Double Jump': A double jump can be performed when little Mario drops from above to grab a mushroom. When little Mario is transforming, the player must press down the A button. After the transformation is complete Mario will perform a second jump. This glitch was removed in Super Mario Bros. DX though was retained in Super Mario All-Stars. This can also be performed by dropping down on a Fire Flower. *'Small Fire Mario': A hard to perform glitch that turns small Mario into Fire Mario without super sizing him. This can only be done in the last levels of each world excluding 8-4. To do this, the player must get behind Bowser and jump on both Bowser and the axe while Super Mario or Fire Mario. The next stage the player enters, Mario will still be super sized, though when he obtains a Mushroom, he'll shrink instead of enlarge. Collecting a Fire Flower after this will turn Mario into fire Mario though he'll still be small. This glitch was removed in both DX and A-Stars. *'Multiple 1-Ups': Another one of the more famous glitches, this is often times mistakenly labeled as a cheat since it significantly aids the player. Shigeru Miyamoto and programmer Kazuaki Morita have both confirmed that they had no clue that this glitch was present in the game. To perform it, the player must go to world 3-1 and go to a stack of blocks where a Koopa Troopa is going down. Jump on the Koopa Troopa before it reaches the bottom and continue to jump on it's shell without touching the ground. If done correctly, the player will receive an unlimited amount of 1-Ups. It's requested that the player quits before they acquire 128 1-Ups, because once this number is reached, the player will receive a game over the next time they lose a life. Development Before Nintendo started development on Super Mario Bros., Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka were working on Devil World together while Miyamoto and Toshihiko Nakago were developing Excitebike in Tokyo. After these two games were completed, the three of them united for the first time to develop both Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda concurrently. Other people involved with the game include Koji Kondo, the composer, Kazuaki Morita and Yasunari Nishida, two programmers, and Hiroshi Yamauchi, the executive producer. According to the developers, some aspects were taken out of one game and brought over to another. For example, the fire bars that are present in the castles of Super Mario Bros. were originally in The Legend of Zelda (this particular switch was made by Shigeru Miyamoto). A goal of Super Mario Bros. was to have the character traverse many different types of lands. "The initial concept behind Super Mario was that we wanted a dynamic, athletic kind of game that would be set on land, sea and air and that would feature a large character", said Tezuka. "we wanted a Mario that was twice the size of the regular one." In the beginning of development, Mario wasn't the playable character. Tezuka stated that "at the start, we had a 16 X 32 pixel square that moved about". "At first, you moved a square object about a single non-scrolling screen", said Nakago, the president of Systems Research and Development. According to him, this was groundbreaking at the time. During this time the square wasn't even able to jump. Eventually though, Takashi Tezuka managed to get Mario to be the playable character. "Next door to the development room was the Sales and Marketing Division", said Takashi. "I got them to show me the sales figures...I was shown the sales figures and I saw that although Mario Bros. on the Famicom had been released over a year previously, it was still selling consistently well...I thought: "This Mario is pretty popular." I recall that I mentioned to Miyamoto-san that Mario was selling consistently well and he said, "Mario seems like the way to go." Nakago and his team managed to make a blue background in the game. Typically games released during this time featured black backgrounds as to not strain someone's eyes. Developers realized that users would play their games for an extensive amount of time, and that a bright color might have distracted the player from the action. According to Nakago, he was so excited about this extraordinary achievement that he quickly called up Miyamoto telling him what they had accomplished. "I'd never seen anything like it.", said Nakago. "Even I was really surprised at the time that the Famicom could manage to display such vivid graphics." After this, the entire development went on to designing the maps for the game. When designing the stages, Miyamoto and Tezuka would draw them out on paper and send them to Nakago and his team at SRD to program into the game. Miyamoto told SRD to make sure each stage lasts about a minute. After contemplating this, he realized that in most games it takes about a second to get from one end of the screen to the other, meaning in a single stage there would have to be numerous screens in one stage. At first they thought that Miyamoto would want them to create 60 screens per stage, but he then explained to them that there would be obstacles in each screen that would take time to get past. At most, the stage with the most screens has only thirty-two, though most stages only averaged around twelve. Nakago stated that SRD would frequently receive a rich amount of documents requiring them to alter some aspects of stages. Back then, adjusting the conditions of a stage was tiresome while today it can be done quickly, especially in s game such as this. Apparently, the group would "pour over" the documents every day and by 10 at night they would finally be finished, go home and come back to repeat the process. Interestingly, in the very first portion of World 1-1, the developers designed it so that the a newcomer almost always gets a Mushroom. In the first level, there are blocks that the player goes under. A menacing Goomba approaches the player, and instinctively the player jumps over it. By the time the player reaches the Goomba and jumps, they will hit a ? block above that would reveal a mushroom. The mushroom goes to the right, hits a pipe and comes towards the player. Since the mushroom resembles the Goomba, the player thinks to jump over it again. Doing this, however, will almost always lead the player to jump right into the Mushroom since after they jump they hit another block from above which causes them to come back to the ground and hit the mushroom. This was to teach players that Mushrooms were a positive thing in the game. Remakes and Re-releases *Port of Super Mario Bros. on the Famicom Disk System. *Re-released in the Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt compilation. *Re-released in the Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, and World Class Track Meet Compilation. *Remade for Super Mario All-Stars, a game that featured this game, as well as 3 others. Included a graphics upgrade, sprite change, sound upgrade, and glitches removed. *Remade in the Super Mario All Stars remake titled Super Mario All Stars Super Mario World. *Remade on Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, with additional content. *Rereleased on the GBA as one of the Classic NES series games. *Though not available through in-game, you can get this game by cheat device in Animal Crossing, 2002(US)/2001 (Japan)/2004(Other) *Is available on the Wii's Virtual Console in North America as of December 25, 2006. *Rereleased on the 25th Anniversary of Super Mario Bros along with other titles. *Remade as a game and watch in 1983 and then a nintendo mini classic in 1998 Virtual Console description External links *Super Mario Bros. at Nintendo.com *Super Mario Bros. at Virtual Console Reviews * the corresponding article on the NES Wiki *StrategyWiki.org Super Mario Bros. strategy guide. *Super Mario Bros. Headquarters *Page at the Mushroom Kingdom site *Gamestat's Page *Moby Games page *Mario Bros Category:Mario games Category:Nintendo Entertainment System games Category:Major Nintendo games Category:Nintendo developed games Category:Virtual Console games Category:1985 video games Category:Nintendo games Category:1987 video games